Network Working Group S. Hollenbeck
Internet-Draft VeriSign, Inc.
Updates: 2246 (if approved) January 16, 2004
Expires: July 16, 2004
Transport Layer Security Protocol Compression Methodsdraft-ietf-tls-compression-07.txt
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on July 16, 2004.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol (RFC 2246) includes
features to negotiate selection of a lossless data compression method
as part of the TLS Handshake Protocol and to then apply the algorithm
associated with the selected method as part of the TLS Record
Protocol. TLS defines one standard compression method which
specifies that data exchanged via the record protocol will not be
compressed. This document describes an additional compression method
associated with a lossless data compression algorithm for use with
TLS, and it describes a method for the specification of additional
TLS compression methods.
Hollenbeck Expires July 16, 2004 [Page 1]

Internet-Draft TLS Compression Methods January 20041. Introduction
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol (RFC 2246, [2]) includes
features to negotiate selection of a lossless data compression method
as part of the TLS Handshake Protocol and to then apply the algorithm
associated with the selected method as part of the TLS Record
Protocol. TLS defines one standard compression method,
CompressionMethod.null, which specifies that data exchanged via the
record protocol will not be compressed. While this single
compression method helps ensure that TLS implementations are
interoperable, the lack of additional standard compression methods
has limited the ability of implementers to develop interoperable
implementations that include data compression.
TLS is used extensively to secure client-server connections on the
World Wide Web. While these connections can often be characterized
as short-lived and exchanging relatively small amounts of data, TLS
is also being used in environments where connections can be
long-lived and the amount of data exchanged can extend into thousands
or millions of octets. XML [4], for example, is increasingly being
used as a data representation method on the Internet, and XML tends
to be verbose. Compression within TLS is one way to help reduce the
bandwidth and latency requirements associated with exchanging large
amounts of data while preserving the security services provided by
TLS.
This document describes an additional compression method associated
with a lossless data compression algorithm for use with TLS.
Standardization of the compressed data formats and compression
algorithms associated with this compression method is beyond the
scope of this document.
2. Compression Methods
TLS [2] includes the following compression method structure in
sections 6.1 and 7.4.1.2 and Appendix sections A.4.1 and A.6:
enum { null(0), (255) } CompressionMethod;
which allows for later specification of up to 256 different
compression methods. This definition is updated to segregate the
range of allowable values into three zones:
1. Values from 0 (zero) through 63 decimal (0x3F) inclusive are
reserved for IETF Standards Track protocols.
2. Values from 64 decimal (0x40) through 223 decimal (0xDF)
inclusive are reserved for assignment for non-Standards Track
Hollenbeck Expires July 16, 2004 [Page 3]

Internet-Draft TLS Compression Methods January 2004
methods.
3. Values from 224 decimal (0xE0) through 255 decimal (0xFF)
inclusive are reserved for private use.
Additional information describing the role of the IANA in the
allocation of compression method identifiers is described in Section5.
In addition, this definition is updated to include assignment of an
identifier for the DEFLATE compression method:
enum { null(0), DEFLATE(1), (255) } CompressionMethod;
As described in section 6 of RFC 2246 [2], TLS is a stateful
protocol. Compression methods used with TLS can be either stateful
(the compressor maintains its state through all compressed records)
or stateless (the compressor compresses each record independently),
but there seems to be little known benefit in using a stateless
compression method within TLS.
The DEFLATE compression method described in this document is
stateful. It is RECOMMENDED that other compression methods that might
be standardized in the future be stateful as well.
Compression algorithms can occasionally expand, rather than compress,
input data. A compression method that exceeds the expansion limits
described in section 6.2.2 of RFC 2246 [2] MUST NOT be used with TLS.
2.1 DEFLATE Compression
The DEFLATE compression method and encoding format is described in
RFC 1951 [5]. Examples of DEFLATE use in IETF protocols can be found
in RFC 1979 [6], RFC 2394 [7], and RFC 3274 [8].
DEFLATE allows the sending compressor to select from among several
options to provide varying compression ratios, processing speeds, and
memory requirements. The receiving decompressor MUST automatically
adjust to the parameters selected by the sender. All data that was
submitted for compression MUST be included in the compressed output,
with no data retained to be included in a later output payload.
Flushing ensures that each compressed packet payload can be
decompressed completely.
3. Compression History and Packet Processing
Some compression methods have the ability to maintain state/history
information when compressing and decompressing packet payloads. The
Hollenbeck Expires July 16, 2004 [Page 4]

Internet-Draft TLS Compression Methods January 2004
compression history allows a higher compression ratio to be achieved
on a stream as compared to per-packet compression, but maintaining a
history across packets implies that a packet might contain data
needed to completely decompress data contained in a different packet.
History maintenance thus requires both a reliable link and sequenced
packet delivery. Since TLS and lower-layer protocols provide
reliable, sequenced packet delivery, compression history information
MAY be maintained and exploited if supported by the compression
method.
As described in section 7 of RFC 2246 [2], TLS allows multiple
connections to be instantiated using the same session through the
resumption feature of the TLS Handshake Protocol. Session resumption
has operational implications when multiple compression methods are
available for use within the session. For example, load balancers
will need to maintain additional state information if the compression
state is not cleared when a session is resumed. As a result, the
following restrictions MUST be observed when resuming a session:
1. The compression algorithm MUST be retained when resuming a
session.
2. The compression state/history MUST be cleared when resuming a
session.
4. Internationalization Considerations
The compression method identifiers specified in this document are
machine-readable numbers. As such, issues of human
internationalization and localization are not introduced.
5. IANA ConsiderationsSection 2 of this document describes a registry of compression method
identifiers to be maintained by the IANA, including assignment of an
identifier for the DEFLATE compression method. Identifier values
from the range 0-63 (decimal) inclusive are assigned via RFC 2434
Standards Action [3]. Values from the range 64-223 (decimal)
inclusive are assigned via RFC 2434 Specification Required [3].
Identifier values from 224-255 (decimal) inclusive are reserved for
RFC 2434 Private Use [3].
6. Security Considerations
This document does not introduce any topics that alter the threat
model addressed by TLS. The security considerations described
throughout RFC 2246 [2] apply here as well.
Hollenbeck Expires July 16, 2004 [Page 5]

Internet-Draft TLS Compression Methods January 2004
However, combining compression with encryption can sometimes reveal
information that would not have been revealed without compression:
data that is the same length before compression might be a different
length after compression, so adversaries that observe the length of
the compressed data might be able to derive information about the
corresponding uncompressed data. Some symmetric encryption
ciphersuites do not hide the length of symmetrically encrypted data
at all. Others hide it to some extent, but still don't hide it
fully. For example, ciphersuites that use stream cipher encryption
without padding do not hide length at all; ciphersuites that use
Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) encryption with padding provide some
length hiding, depending on how the amount of padding is chosen. Use
of TLS compression SHOULD take into account that the length of
compressed data may leak more information than the length of the
original uncompressed data.
Compression algorithms tend to be mathematically complex and prone to
implementation errors. An implementation error that can produce a
buffer overrun introduces a potential security risk for programming
languages and operating systems that do not provide buffer overrun
protections. Careful consideration should thus be given to
protections against implementation errors that introduce security
risks.
As described in Section 2, compression algorithms can occasionally
expand, rather than compress, input data. This feature introduces
the ability to construct rogue data that expands to some enormous
size when compressed or decompressed. RFC 2246 describes several
methods to ameliorate this kind of attack. First, compression has to
be lossless. Second, a limit (1,024 bytes) is placed on the amount of
allowable compression content length increase. Finally, a limit
(2^14 bytes) is placed on the total content length. See section6.2.2 of RFC 2246 [2] for complete details.
7. Acknowledgements
The concepts described in this document were originally discussed on
the IETF TLS working group mailing list in December, 2000. The
author acknowledges the contributions to that discussion provided by
Jeffrey Altman, Eric Rescorla, and Marc Van Heyningen. Later
suggestions that have been incorporated into this document were
provided by Tim Dierks, Pasi Eronen, Peter Gutmann, Elgin Lee, Nikos
Mavroyanopoulos, Alexey Melnikov, Bodo Moeller, Win Treese, and the
IESG.
Normative References
[1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Hollenbeck Expires July 16, 2004 [Page 6]

Internet-Draft TLS Compression Methods January 2004
Intellectual Property Statement
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it
has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the
IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and
standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of
claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of
licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to
obtain a general license or permission for the use of such
proprietary rights by implementors or users of this specification can
be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive
Director.
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assignees.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
Hollenbeck Expires July 16, 2004 [Page 8]

Internet-Draft TLS Compression Methods January 2004
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Hollenbeck Expires July 16, 2004 [Page 9]